Wood Leather

Wood Leather or Leather Wood, is a low impact vegan alternative to real leather and looks incredibly similar.

Although made from wood, it has the flexibility of fabric and is soft and very durable. It is created using thin sheets of wood, they are glued together and micro lasers etch the surface to create the facade of leather, they are then sewn together and assembled like leather. They can have a coat of vanish on top to lengthen their durability. Oliver and Co. is a great example of this material.

Due to the nature of wood it is therefore a very long lasting fabric, a much long shelf life than leather. It can reduce the kg of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by 60% compared to a square meter of leather. Although, because of the adhesive used to bond the sheets together it cannot be put back into the earth as it’s original form, so therefore it’s circular economy has a hole, however it is a much better alternative to leather, which follows of from my meat blog, the extensive rearing of animals just for our pleasure has to stop. Leather is a direct by-product of the meat industry.

This wood leather can also be made from silkworm cocoons. A lady called Marlène Huissoud, she is a material innovator looking at quirky alternative materials. She explains how the material of a silkworm cocoon is held together using a natural glue called seracin, it holds together the silk threads to create the cocoon. However she believes that you can extract this natural glue and reactivate it ‘by wetting and heating it’s fibres to create a strong material similar to paper.’ Paper obviously comes from wood so when you layer enough sheets of paper together you can have a very strong piece of material, which can then be coated with a varnish. Marlène has also found an alternative to a natural vanish, made from honey bee propolis. It is what bees collect from the trees and use in there hives as a sort of glue. It appeal is because is has a glossy finish like varnish.